Perspectives parent category
With the onset of a good number of path breaking cinema making its way to mainstream, Mollywood is the place to be for new and aspiring talent. The same applies to a self-proclaimed movie buff that I am who initially did not indulge into Malayalam cinema, owing to language barrier but slowly learning to overcome it with the increasing trend of subtitling for regional movies.
After having been mesmerized by Mohanlal last year in the same storyline, the fear that arose when Papanasam was announced as a remake to Drishyam was: “Kamal may do more than sufficient to the role so effortlessly played by Mohanlal and the core of Drishyam – its simplicity- may take a beating”
or Kollywood, the 3 months that went by can be considered a stint of high quality offerings. There were releases from 2 of the most respected upper-echelon members of the fraternity – Kamal Haasan & Mani Ratnam. To top that, the period also came close to seeing the release of two National Award winning films. One released & became the talk of the town (Kaaka Muttai). There was also a train of blink-and-you-miss releases, which has become the k-town norm. The other highlight was the Horror/Horror-comedy genre getting even more popular with 2 such releases. The summary wouldn’t end if we were not to mention the comeback of Jyothika!
When any film of Kamal releases – there would be sections in the audience having conversations on varied degrees of various emotions.A section that talks about how peeved it is, with Kamal taking a dig at its principles & practices.
The word, Superstar is a pretty commonly used term world over for all big movie stars but in Tamil Nadu alone this title has hallowed status. While there have been numerous polls & debates, for the general audience (& of course me), Rajinikanth is the only Superstar. In that sense, in 2011, when he was fighting for his life owing to many ailments, unimaginable levels of adulation & reverie were evident with fans waiting with hope and prayers for every tiny weeny bit of news that came about Rajnikanth’s condition. Reports of his close mate & masterful actor Kamal Haasan incredibly pained by this development, has been well documented.
We live in a world where producers demand newbie directors to shoot a trailer or a set of scenes from the script to prove their worth. This is totally a valid case as it is the Producer’s money after all. But to gain entry to narrate a script to a producer or even to join as a Director’s assistant, short films seem to be the order of the day,In India at least! This again seems to be a justifiable expectation. What makes these grapes turn sour is the attempt to stretch these short films into laborious feature films where the short-film director lazily inserts songs, comedy sequences & fights to make the short into a passable feature. That is a strict No-No!
I would agree if you were to call O Kadhal Kanmani a comeback of sorts for Madras Talkies, the production house but I have my own reasons to argue against if one were to claim the film is a comeback for director Mani Ratnam.
2015 kicked off with the Pongal releases & right in the middle of the mix was Shankar’s Vikram starrer ‘I’ – arguably, the most expected film of the year! GV Prakash’s litmus test as an actor came in the form of Darling & the maverick SJ Suryah got back after a hiatus through his Isai. Then came another heavyweight film in the form of Gautham’s comeback vehicle of sorts, Yennai Arindhaal followed right after by KV Anand’s Anegan.
Every year, there is a recurrent debate on which film, actor, actress, supporting cast, original score etc. gets the Oscar (or perhaps any Global Award for that matter) among film buffs. In essence one can never generically say with confidence that one particular film or performance was THE BEST as tastes differ from one person to another. While one person would feel that an uncomplicated, In-Your-Face film like Whiplash should be honoured as the Best, another would feel that the poetically created world of The Grand Budapest Hotel should pip that to glory, and another would say a film should have multiple layers challenging us technically and thematically thereby christening Birdman as the Best of all, while another would look at the painstaking effort, commitment, vision of the people behind Boyhood as the Best ever. It is a thankless, himalayan and an almost impossible task to satisfy everyone.
After covering the 11th edition of CIFF , we felt that facets like volunteering, visibility & organization needed minor tweaks to give the festival a better facelift and reach. Our hope was indeed translated into reality by the commendable efforts of ICAF and volunteers from DG Vaishnav college. Another plus to this installment of CIFF was Natty, a fictional character in Social media, to engage the present-day audience better.
